This DIY Machine Churns Out Beautiful Concrete Lamps with Embedded Fiber Optics
This brilliant machine to automates the fabrication process of delightful hemispherical concrete lamps with embedded fiber optic lights.
Most of the projects we feature here are one-off builds. As impressive as they are, making one of something gives creators a lot more freedom than making many somethings. If you value your time and money, making many things requires the development of efficient processes and the equipment to enable those.
The classic television program How It’s Made has hundreds of proofs of that, as it showcases massive factories often dedicated to manufacturing just a single simple product. YouTuber Unnecessary Automation didn’t have that kind of space, but he was able to build a machine designed specifically for fabricating beautiful concrete lamps with embedded fiber optics.
Unnecessary Automation’s lamps are very cool. They’re concrete hemispheres dotted with light, thanks to thin optical fiber that pokes through. But making those by hand requires a lot of work. Unnecessary Automation had to drill dozens or even hundreds of holes in a plastic mold, and then cut, insert, and glue the optical fiber in place.
This machine automates that process. It drills all of the holes in the mold and also puts the optical fibers in and secures them with glue. The machine is quite complex and tailored to this specific application, but Unnecessary Automation does a great job of explaining how it works.
The heart of the machine is a mount for the hemispherical plastic mold. The machine can rotate that on two axes using stepper motors, so any point on the hemisphere becomes accessible. A light-duty spindle motor drills the holes, sliding in and out on a rail with a rack-and-pinion mechanism actuated by another stepper.
That drilling process is actually the simplest piece of the puzzle. Placing the optical fiber was more difficult. It feeds out from a spool via a mechanism similar to a 3D-printer extruder, then a servo-actuated blade cuts each segment to length.
Finally, there is the gluing system. Unnecessary Automation chose a liquid adhesive activated by UV light. A peristaltic pump pushes that out through a nozzle, which swings into place thanks to another servo motor. After depositing a specific amount of glue, the machine activates an UV light to cure the adhesive and lock the fiber in place in the mold.
We’ve only given a high-level overview here, so be sure to watch the video for a complete explanation. But the key takeaway is that Unnecessary Automation now has a machine that will help him make his awesome lamps much more quickly and efficiently.